The OpenStack Blog
Everything in & around OpenStack in written words.

We Did It: Zero to Book in Five Days

Call me crazy, call me maybe, but we did it! We have a 50,000 word book, 230 pages long, now available for download in your favorite ebook format, or purchase a printed copy if you like the no-batteries-required version. Go to http://docs.openstack.org/ops/ to get a copy and watch a video we made on day four.

We started the week off with a cookout at Everett Toews’s house. I transposed the house numbers and walked up to the wrong house, rang the bell and everything! A nice Texan lady told us we looked like we were going to have fun but the party wasn’t at her house. Woops! We found the right house on the same street and had a great time. The evening was complete with peach cobbler as we nervously awaited our fate: Could we complete a book in a week?

On Monday we assembled to find out. In a room with an entire wall of white board, our facilitator Adam Hyde unwrapped packs and packs of sticky notes with fresh markers. He introduced the book sprint process and said that he has done about 55 of these. He also said we may not get the book we thought we would going in, but by the end we will get the book we need. Sure enough, we collectively wrote about 10,000 words a day, bringing in all the content we could, revising, reshaping, rewriting, until it all hung together as a real book.

Our hope is that it is the book we all need, that it fills a gap for an under-served audience, the operators of clouds. We want your input, so start reading!